Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/287

 9* s. x. OCT. 4, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

279

at Wadham College, Oxford, B.A. 1865, M.A. 1868. CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D.

" THIRTY DAYS HATH SEPTEMBER " (9 th S. x. 206). Grafton, like other eminent poets, has been edited and amended, his "immortal verse " having been made exhaustive and precise probably by some ingenious peda- gogue in this form :

Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November ,

All the rest have thirty-one,

Excepting February alone,

Which hath but twenty-eight days clear,

And twenty-nine in each leap-year.

THOMAS BAYNE.

[The version we recall has a final distich : Except in leap-year, when 's the time When February's days are twenty-nine. There are obviously many variants.]

" KEEP YOUR HAIR ON " (9 th S. ix. 184, 335 ; x. 33). In the reply at the last reference a suggestion is made that the word " front," which appears in a quotation from Barrere's 'Argot and Slang,' ought to be " frout." No authority beyond a suspicion is given.

The word front is correctly quoted from Barrere as the Winchester synonym of the Shrewsbury word swot.

In Barrere and Leland's 'Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant,' 1889, the following appears : " Front (Winchester School), angry, vexed, from ' affronted.' "

In the ' English Dialect Dictionary ' the substantive front is attributed to Cumber- land, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire, and Somersetshire. " An affront, insult, esp. in phr. to take the fronts, to be insulted or offended."

I find nothing about frout. May I suggest that when a quotation from a book is given it is well to give the exact reference ? e.g., it would have been convenient if MR. CLAYTON (ix. 335) had stated that his quotation from Barrere's ' Argot and Slang ' was to be found on pp. xxvi and xxvii.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

I have always understood the phrase about " getting the shirt out " in the sense of the Editorial note. It has been objected that showing the shirt thus is hardly " getting it out," but there are cognate expressions in our dialects. A Nottinghamshire man will "get his pond out" by clearing away the willows and brushwood that have overgrown it ; and I remember that when my brother first appeared with a beard and moustache his old nurse said, " Dear heart, lad, how fou' it looks ! Let me fetch a bill and mittens and get your mouth out." C. C. B.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London. Letter-Books C and D. Edited by Reginald R. Sharpe, D.C.L. (Published by Order of the Cor- poration.)

UNDER the admirable direction of Dr. Sharpe, the Records Clerk, the important labour of calendaring the Letter- Books preserved in the Guildhall archives proceeds slowly and securely. A full notice of the nature of the task undertaken and the character of the records dealt with was given 9 th S. iv. 198 and 9 th S. vi. 198. Since our latest review of the work was issued two further volumes have appeared.

Letter- Book C covers circa 1291 - 1309, a period with which the previous volumes are also partly occupied. It was a time of great unpopularity for Edward I., who, since the expulsion of the Jews a year previously, had been driven into the hands Of the Lombard merchants for pecuniary assistance, and had so provoked an accumulation of discontent among the merchants, ever jealous of the foreigner. Wars with the Scots and with the French, who harried the south coast, and had recently burnt a great part of Dover, added to the difficulties of the king, who, before starting for the Continent, had to summon, in 1296, a Parliament, from which he derived but meagre satisfaction. To the presence of large numbers of merchants of Almayne and Provence and other parts is imputed the debase- ment of the coinage, of which complaint is com- monly met. Among innumerable records of matters interesting to the antiquary and the historian we find a letter from Elias Russel, the Mayor, and citizens of London to Johanna, daughter of the king, Countess of Gloucester and Hertford (married in 1290 to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester), complaining that " merchant citizens repairing to Henlee (Henley) were distrained and their mer- chandise seized whilst passing Merlawe (Marlow)," and praying for relief from such persecution in the future. A writ of Privy Seal, addressed to the Mayor, aldermen, and other good men of the City of London, notifies them that merchants are refusing to supply the royal wardrobe with wax, grocery, drapery, furs, linen, canvas, and other necessaries, because of the risks they run of not being paid, and begging them to become surety to the extent of SOW., payable at Michaelmas next. Other docu- ments of high interest include the terms of peace be- tween the King of England on the one part and Guy, Count of Flanders, and Margaret his mother, on the other part, dated " Monstrel sur la Mer, Saturday after the feast of la Magdalene [22 July], A.D. 1274,*' with a deed of covenant, entered into by seven noblemen of Flanders, in case the provisions were not fulfilled.

Letter-Book D covers 1309-14. It was formerly known as the Red Book (Liber Rubeus), and is principally occupied with the record of admissions to the freedom of the City by " redemption," that is by the payment of a sum of money. In the introduction Dr. Sharpe shows what were the advantages enjoyed by a freeman and what were his responsibilities. Among the former, which were numerous, come freedom of trade, wholesale or retail, liberty to open a shop, and right of residence within the City walls. A strange privilege was that a freeman dying, leaving children, had his funeral expenses paid by the City out of the estates